


Thanksgiving

by Dragongoddess13



Series: Liasons [4]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, Meet the Family, Secret Relationship, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 05:37:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21489232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragongoddess13/pseuds/Dragongoddess13
Summary: They've let it go far too long, now it's time for them to come clean. Sara just hopes her father won't try to have Leonard arrested.
Relationships: Barry Allen/Iris West, Quentin Lance/Donna Smoak, Sara Lance/Leonard Snart
Series: Liasons [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1458415
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

xXx

“Of course I’ll be there dad.” Sara speaks into the phone. From the sofa, Leonard tries not to eavesdrop but finds it rather difficult. He keeps his eyes focused on his book, but he’s not actually reading it. The doorbell rings and Sara moves from where she’s pacing in front of the fireplace to the front door. Within seconds Barry and Iris are there. “No I’m taking the train this year. Cisco is going out of town for the holiday so he won’t be here to port everyone around.” 

Barry and Iris greet him quietly and take a seat, on the love seat adjacent to the sofa. “It’ll be a good experience.” at this Barry and Iris share a confused look. “Because I’m bringing someone this year.” she pauses to listen again. “Yes, we’ve been together for awhile now, we just weren’t ready to say anything.” she listens again. “You have met him, yes.” she sighs. “Because quite frankly I didn’t think you would approve. I’m still not entirely convinced you will. If I can be completely honest with you, we’ve made plans to go somewhere if you make a scene, so… keep that in mind.” she scoffs. “No I don’t think I’m overreacting. You’re very good at freezing people out when you don’t like them, I mean… sure you had good reason to be mad at Olie, but you were like the king of making him uncomfortable when we were teenagers.” he rolls her eyes. “No, dad, I was completely unaware he was cheating on Laurel.” she replies deadpan. “I mean it’s not like I was one of the other women or anything.” she looks distinctly uncomfortable as she listens to her father on the other end of the line before; “Oh my god, how did we get so far off topic? My point is, I am bringing someone who is very important to me and I need you to be on your best behavior or we’re leaving. It’s that simple.” she gives Leonard an exhausted. “Okay, I’m hanging up now.” pause. “I love you too, tell Donna I said hello.” 

Sara pulls the phone from her ear and clicks it off looking to Barry and Iris as she does so. “Are you sure you guys don’t want to come to Star City for Thanksgiving this year?” 

“Positive.” Iris replies, trying not to laugh. “So you guys are telling your family then?” 

“We don’t really have a choice at this point.” Sara replied. “But even then, it’s been a year since we got married, we didn’t really plan on waiting so long to say anything.” 

“Why don’t you have a choice?” Barry asks confused. Leonard gives him a look that seems to articulate exactly what he’s thinking. Sara will always be impressed by that. Barry sits up a little straighter. “Me? What do I have to do with it?” 

“You couldn’t keep a secret to save your life.” Leonard replied. 

“I can too, I have a secret identity!” 

“Which is the worst kept secret among the heroes.” 

“No it’s not!”

“Hun, it really is.” Iris tells him as gently as she can. 

“Alright fine, but I have other secrets.” he quickly corrects.

“Really?” Leonard asks skeptically. Barry nods. “Name one.” 

“Well there’s, oof.” Iris’s elbow to the ribs stops him short and for a moment he looks offended until he seems to realize what just happened. He looks to Leonard outraged and Leonard just smirks back at him. 

xXx

“You’re nervous.” Leonard says. It’s not a question, merely an observation as he watches Sara stare out the window at the passing scenery, her fingers drumming on the table between them. She looks over at him.

“What?” she asks confused. Leonard smiles to himself. 

“Look, maybe you should talk to them on your own first.” he suggests, not for the first time, and like every time before she shoots it down. 

“No, we’re together, a team, husband and wife, we stand by each other and I won’t act as though I’m ashamed of you.” she tells him firmly. “We do this together and if they don’t approve that’s their problem.” 

Leonard sighs, trying not to let it show how much her words mean to him. “I appreciate that, but I need you to understand I don’t expect you to turn your back on your family for me, anymore than you expected me to shun Lisa if she didn’t approve.” 

“You  _ are  _ my family Leonard, just as much as they are, maybe even more.” 

He huffs. “How do you figure that?”

“Because I chose you.” 

Leonard refused to look away, refused to show weakness, but he was discovering more and more that Sara just made that impossible. He wanted her to know how much he cared about her, how much it meant to him that she would go to bat for him when so few others would, especially against her own family, the people she fought hard to get home to for years. 

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt.” he finally admits. “I know what they mean to you, how hard you worked to get back to them. I don’t want you to throw that away because of me.” 

Sara watches him, her eyes traveling his face. Eventually she looks away, smiling. “Well then, I guess it’s a good thing I’ve got you to watch my back if that happens.” 

“Always.” he tells her simply, the inflection of love he pours into the word is all she ever needs to know that he feels the same way. 

The rest of the trip is peaceful. They play cards for a little while, talk and get some work done. Leonard has a plethora of new clients to worry about a fact that had him turning to his sister for help and with Sara expanding her organization to Central since moving there shortly after their return from Vegas, she now had twice the territory to worry about. Thankfully, as always, she can count on Sin and team Arrow to cover her back when she’s not in town and now that her father is retired from the Police force he’s spending his time running security for them. 

The trip goes by quickly, the snowy Midwest giving way to the chill, but still green western U.S.. In what feels like record time their pulling their bags from storage and hailing a taxi. Despite Leonard’s reassurances on the trip in, Sara finds a heavy weight settling in her chest the closer they get to her father’s house. It’ll just be her father and Donna when they get there, everyone else will show up tomorrow morning to help get ready for dinner, which could be a good thing, or a bad thing. The fact of the matter is, this could go either way. Her father has made it no secret that he wasn’t particularly impressed by Leonard’s flip to the light side, especially since it wasn’t a complete flip. Still, he was fairly civil with him whenever they had to work together and a part of her hoped his opinion had changed some. 

Pulling up to the house should have been exciting. Now that she lived across the country, she didn’t get to see her family as often, but as the familiar red door of the house she grew up in came into view, she only felt dread. 

“Are you ready?” Leonard asked, pulling her from her thoughts. She turned to look at him.

“No.” she replied before getting out of the taxi. They pulled their bags out of the trunk, taking their time, prolonging the inevitable, but they could only do that for long. Leonard paid the cabbie and then together they walked up the front walk, stopping on the porch. She took a deep breath, raising her fist to knock. 

Sara doesn’t know if she would call it relief that Donna is the one to answer the door, but her bright smiling face has a way of making things feel a lot less tense, so maybe it is a relief. 

“Hi! Welcome home.” she ushers them inside, giving Sara a big hug. She prepares herself for the inevitable awkwardness of Donna hugging Leonard, but to her surprise and relief she merely shakes his hand, her smile no less bright or happy to see him. “Come in, come in.” she says, after they hang up their coats. “Your father is obsessing over the ham again.” 

Sara grins. “What else is new?” she asks, earning a laugh. 

As they step into the living room her father comes out of the kitchen, his steps halting for a split second as he sets eyes on Leonard before he continues on, pulling Sara into a hug. 

“Welcome home baby girl.” he says, smiling brightly. 

“Thanks daddy.” she replies as she steps out of his embrace a few moments later. She turns partially, angling herself to half face Leonard. “You remember Leonard.”

There’s the briefest pause, but Quentin steps forward nonetheless, holding a hand out to Leonard. “Of course. Good to see you again.” 

“You as well, Captain Lance.” Leonard replies. The conversation is a bit stilted after that, so Sara suggests they settle in and then come back down for dinner. Lance tradition stipulates Pizza for dinner the night before Thanksgiving which will provide just the right atmosphere for a calm evening over what Sara hopes is civil conversation.

“That didn’t seem so bad.” Sara sighs, then immediately cringes. “And I just jinxed it.” she collapsed back on her bed, hands over her eyes. Leonard lets her get it out of her system, methodically unpacking his suitcase and carefully laying out his clothing on the bed. They’re staying in Sara’s childhood bedroom, which has not changed at all since she left for college, undoubtedly a side effect of going missing, presumed dead for five years. He can’t say he blames her father, if Lisa had gone missing he wouldn’t change anything either. However, it does lend a window to a version of Sara he never got to meet and quite frankly, he’s resisting the urge to laugh. 

While the walls are a clean white, every accent is hot pink, from her comforter to her desk chair to the fuzzy bean bag chair in the corner with her book shelf. There’s a stack of sketch pads in the corner of her desk and an aisle standing next to it with a painting that looks to be half finished. The surface of the desk was covered in dry paint and marker spots and he’s sure if he opened any of the drawers he would find a mess of paints and brushes. She’d once told him she had been a fine arts major, something he was intrigued by, being a purveyor of art himself (and yes he did count stealing it as an interest in art), but he had never seen her work before. She claimed she hadn’t picked up a brush since before the gambit, but looking at the painting by the window, even half finished, he thinks it’s a shame someone so talented has lost her muse. 

It’s hard to imagine the toughened assassin interested in all this frill and color, but he supposes what he heard was true, she was a very different person before she got on the Gambit. To this day, she still hasn’t told him everything about her five years missing and quite frankly he can’t blame her, he’s seen the scars, can tell when she’s in pain from old injuries, has been awoken by her nightmares and not all of that could have come from a life with the League of Assassins. 

In an effort to take her mind off her father’s reaction, or lack thereof, he comments on the decor. “It’s very pink in here.” She laughs, removing her hands from her eyes and tipping her head back to look up at him. “If I look under the mattress am I going to find a matching diary?” 

“No, I didn’t keep a diary growing up.” she tells him. “I drew instead.” she tells him, eyes darting to the side where she can see the canvas just over his shoulder He turns to look as if he hadn’t been staring at it when they first walked in. 

“It’s very good.” he tells her. She shrugs sitting up. 

“It’s alright.” she replies, grabbing her own bag off the floor and beginning to unpack. 

“It’s not finished.” he continues turning back to his own work. 

She sighs. “Yeah, I started it when I was home from school one weekend and then… well, then the Gambit went down and I guess they just let it sit here.” he considers asking why she didn’t finish it when she got back, why she didn’t pick up her art again at all, but she beats him to it. “When I got back I couldn’t finish it and then after I got my head on straight, I couldn’t remember what I wanted to do with it.” 

“A shame.” he says softly. “It’s beautiful.” 

“Thank you.” she replies as he turns around again, catching the light blush across her cheeks, her eyes focused on refolding the clothes she pulls out of her bag. 

The silence that falls between them isn’t uncomfortable, but Leonard isn’t too keen on the idea of letting it become awkward. “So, how do you want to handle this?” he asks. 

Sara sighs again. “I don’t know. I can’t decide if we should tell him tonight so he has time to get used to the idea, or if we should wait and tell everyone tomorrow.” 

“Well, you told your mother, maybe you should tell him on his own.” 

She nods. He has a point, though she’s not looking forward to the conversation either way. How either of them let it get this far without saying anything, she’ll never know, but the damage is done and there’s nothing left to do but come clean. 

As if on queue, the doorbell sounds, alerting them to the arrival of dinner. Leonard stands and ushers her to her feet. “Come on. We’ll go have dinner, tell your dad everything and then come back up here and try to figure out how two adults are going to fit on a twin bed made for a teenage girl.”

Sara laughs, taking his hand letting him pull her out the door. 

xXx

Sara is pleasantly surprised by the conversation at dinner. Donna, the wonderfully social woman she is, starts up the conversation when awkward silence sets in and keeps it going until their all significantly more comfortable. Even Leonard is engaging in conversation. As the meal comes to an end, the laughter dying down, Sara and Leonard share a look that does not go unnoticed by her father. 

“Something you’d like to tell us?” Quentin asks, looking between them. Sara takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly. 

“This might be a little hard to hear, and I want you to know I had no intention of keeping this a secret for so long, I just… well I got busy and I know that’s not an excuse but…”

“Sara, sweetheart, you can tell me anything, you know that. Whatever it is can’t be as bad as finding out you became an assassin while you were missing.” 

“That’s true I suppose. Well… Len and I are married.” 

There’s a moment where Sara can’t tell what her father is thinking and she braces herself for anything, except his actually reaction. 

“Huh…” he replies. “How long?” 

“About a year.” Leonard replies. 

“Len asked for my help with something for work and I tagged along. While we were there… well… one thing led to another. I promise we weren’t drunk or anything.”

“How long were you together before that?” Donna asks when it looks like Quentin is struggling to find words. 

“About a year and a half, maybe a little more.” Sara explains. “Things started out casually, so we didn’t say anything and then it just kind of...well…” she stops short, not really sure what she’s trying to say. 

The conversation is stilted again, as it was before, and eventually they parted ways for the evening. Sara and Leonard don’t speak until their back in her room, the door closed behind them. 

“That wasn’t so bad, right?” she asks, plopping down on the bed. 

“It certainly could have been worse.” Leonard replies, leaning over to lay a kiss on the crown. She looks up at him, smiling softly. She reaches up, tugging him back down to her by the collar of his sweater, sealing her lips to his in a sweet kiss that quickly devolves as he brings a knee up to rest against the mattress. As one they moved to lay back only to stop short when the bed gave out a loud, protesting creak. “You know, you’re father has been very understanding so far, I don’t think we should push it.”

“Agreed.” 

xXx

Sara stepped into the kitchen and began pulling ingredients out of the fridge and cabinets. Leonard was currently in the shower and she thought it might be nice to surprise him with a cup of his favorite hot cocoa. She was busy stirring the milk as it heated when she heard someone step in behind her. 

“I thought I heard someone down here.” Quentin says as she turns to look over her shoulder at him. 

“Hey, I didn’t wake you did I?” 

“No, no, I was already up. Lot to think about today.” he tells her. Sara sighs. 

“I’m sorry dad. I know that can’t be what you were expecting to hear today.” she tells him. 

“You have no reason to be sorry, Sara.” Quentin tells her, stepping up to the island between them. He takes a seat on the stool, leaning over the top. “I knew when you called that you probably had big news, it’s not what I expected, your right about that, but it’s nothing to be sorry about.” he continues. “I’ll be honest, he’s not my favorite person, but he clearly loves you so he can’t be all bad.” she smiles. “Are you happy?” he asks. 

“Very.” she replies honestly. 

“Then I’m happy for you.” he says. 

She smiles. “I’m sorry we didn’t tell you sooner.” 

“You know, it makes sense.” her father says, surprising her. “You’ve never been very good at sharing what you’re feeling. I can understand why you kept all of this to yourself. When you were growing up you didn’t talk about your feelings, you drew instead. Your mother and I used to decipher what you were feeling by what you created that day.”

“Really?” 

He nods. “We’d make an excuse to go into your room and try to see what was on the aisle or what you were working on in your sketchpad and that’s how we knew when something was wrong or not.” he explains. Quentin takes a slow deep breath. “After you went missing, I went through your books. I just wanted to know why you went, why you got on that ship and as soon as I saw the portrait of Oliver I knew. I could see it in the lines, the shading, it was obvious what you felt for him. He had seduced you.” 

“Dad, please don’t try to erase my responsibility for my own actions.” she tells him. 

“No, no, I know, I just… well, that’s all in the past now.” 

Sara turns to finish the cocoa, pouring it into two cups and topping both with mini marshmallows. She cleans up and turns back to her father. “I never understood why you never took up your art again after you came back.” he continues as he stands to follow her back upstairs. “You had so much trouble expressing yourself honestly, growing up, I figured you would find the same outlet again.” 

“I tried, but everything I made looked wrong.” she tells him, stopping outside her door. “I tried in the league, but it all look clinical, like something made for mass production. And then when I got home it… it was wrong, it was all wrong.” 

Quentin sighs. “I’m sorry to hear that baby girl.” he tells her, leaning forward to plant a kiss on her forehead. “Get some rest huh, you have a lot to look forward to tomorrow.” 

Sara grimaced. “Don’t remind me.” 

He chuckled as he turned to leave and when he was gone, Sara slipped back into her room to find Leonard laid out on the bed. 

“Maybe we should sleep on the floor.” she says, taking in the way his feet hung off the end of the bed. 

“I think that might be for the best.” he agrees accepting the mug of cocoa. “Was that your father out there?” 

“Mmm,” she hummed, taking a drink. “Yeah, he heard me downstairs and came to see what was going on.” 

“Everything alright?” 

She smiles. “Yeah, he’s… happy for us.” 

Leonard smiles back, wrapping an arm around her as she leans into his side. 

-

-

-

-

-

-

Bonus Scene:

Leonard woke to the sound of the water running in the bathroom. He looked over to see Sara at the sink, washing well used paint brushes under the faucet. He sat up, surprisingly not sore from sleeping on the floor and on instinct turned to catch sight of the aisle. What was once an unfinished landscape was now a finished mountain range with snowy peaks, bright blue sky and a reflective crystal clear lake. Spruce trees rose up around the water and if he looked close enough he could see little woodland creatures scurrying about. 

It was peaceful. Content. 


End file.
